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Anyone fortunate enough to be able to remember Walt Kelly’s Pogo Possum cartoons will know this quote well:

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

The history of the quote is pretty cool. It was first used on an Earth Day poster in 1970. Below are two versions of the original poster. I couldn’t find a better graphic of it online, but I think, with a little work, it could be used on websites, protest signs, etc. 

Be careful, because the quote is a double-edged sword ( a tool Kelly was great at using.) 

Sometimes we are our own enemies. And I don’t me “we” as in “them.” Sometimes the infighting within our ranks holds us back. 

I’m not going to harp on this, because those who can, already know what I mean, and those who don’t know will never be convinced by facts or logic. 

So let’s work on fighting “them” instead. 

It might be nice to use these posters on Earth Day again, although I’m sure people do that every year.

The first two are versions of the 1970 Earth Day Poster. 

Pogo 1970 Earth Day Poster

Pogo 1970 Earth Day Poster

This one is from the 1971 Earth Day poster:

Pogo 1971 Earth Day poster

My take on the issue:

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Want to know more about Pogo, the quotation, and the poster? Check out these sites:

http://www.igopogo.com/final_authority.htm  ZEROING IN ON THOSE POLLUTERS: WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US, By Walt Kelly.

http://www.igopogo.com/we_have_met.htm From the foreword to The Pogo Papers, Copyright 1952-53

This is one amazing video. Believe it or not, Fox News (Faux News?) covered a story that reflects negatively on a predatory industry.

Check out the story about the woman in Colorado who can light her water faucet.

I don’t know how anyone can be informed at all about this issue and not see what a horrible scam the gas-leases are. They cannot be “mitigated” by coalitions. They are just plain bad. 

Resist them, don’t collaborate.

This week there are three local presentations on

How the Dangers of Gas Drilling Affect You

Friday, 13 March, at 7 pm – Cherry Valley
    Old School gym, two blocks west of the Cherry Valley traffic light on County Route 54

Sunday, 15 March at 2 pm – Cooperstown
   Templeton Hall, 63 Pioneer Street

Monday, 16th March at 7 pm – Oneonta
     St. Mary’s Parish Center at the corner of Walnut and Elm Streets

Presenters:  
   Ron Bishop, Chemistry Lecturer at SUNY Oneonta
    James Herman, Hartwick property owner
    Colleen Blacklock, Oneonta resident who has been researching gas drilling impacts on agriculture

Forum sponsored by Sustainable Otsego
For more information call 547-8586
Free and open to the public

Former water superintendent, employee face charges

March 11,2009

The former superintendent of Binghamton’s Water Department and another former water employee were arraigned this morning on state environmental law charges.

Read more at Pressconnects.com

Cayuga Heights plant accepts drilling wastewater

March 11,2009

While the Ithaca wastewater plant’s owners deliberate whether to accept the liquefied remains of animal carcasses from Cornell University, the Cayuga Heights wastewater treatment plant is already accepting wastewater from gas drilling companies.

Just like the financial crisis has spawned a bunch of internet scams to “help you through it,” the energy crisis has been doing the same for years. That’s where T. Boone Pickens comes in.

Like Neville Chamberlain, who notoriously favored “appeasement” of Hitler, and let him grow before he tried to swallow all of Europe, Pickens is trying to con us that some cockamamie scheme is “Peace (or ‘energy independence’) in our time.”

Band-aid plans, and the blind acceptance that they will help us in the long run, only make the long run longer and harder. “Cover your ass,” is a poor substitute for, “Stand up and fight back.”

You’ll probably be reading more analogies to Neville Chamberlain, as there seems to be a fatalistic, “well, they’re coming anyway, might as well appease them” attitude among some who would like to frighten landowners for their own reasons.

T Boone Pickens is only trying to use us.

This is from CDOG:

A) His only agenda is his own profit – but he’s pretty damn slick at making it look otherwise, isn’t he?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70HFEHB6dag

B) The “Energy Plan” is his ticket to increasing demand for a dirty fuel that ruins lives everywhere it’s extracted, and in fact will NOT be used for energy independence.  A great deal of it is slated for export.  I’m talking about natural gas, or as we like to call it, UN-natural shale gas.   The process of hydraulic fracturing, which pollutes vast amounts of precious water across the nation and leaves dead zones and sick  people in its wake, is used to get natural gas out of tight shales.   We need clean water, clean air, healthy cropland and healthy people much more than we need a few years’ worth of a dirty hydrocarbon fuel.

Want to know more?  Visit:

• 
http://un-naturalgas.org/weblog/?cat=107


• http://www.journeyoftheforsaken.com/fracpage.htm


• http://www.journeyoftheforsaken.com/whatyouneedtoknow.htm


• http://www.journeyoftheforsaken.com/consortiumofthefraced.htm


• http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/home.php


• http://www.earthworksaction.org/oil_and_gas.cfm
  

Don’t let Pickens “aw, shucks” demeanor fool you. Remember what happened the last time someone fooled us with that?